Yeah, the Supergirl post exploded in just a few hours. Partly this is my fault. I was trying to do this hairpin turn argument where I would list all the ways the trailer looked awful and then pull a 180 and argue why it was just fine, and might even be a good thing. But either I whiffed the turn or some people stopped reading halfway through, because a lot of people pushed back, thinking I was attacking the show. That probably made the discussion a little more controversial than it needed to be. Ah well. We hammered it out.

But it did get me thinking: What are the most commentedAnd thus, probably the most controversial. posts on this site? So I did a little MYSQL querySELECT comment_count, ID, post_date, post_title FROM `wp_posts` ORDER BY comment_count DESC LIMIT 32; to find out. Below are the results and my analysis.

As the title suggests, Autoblography Part 11: Roller Rinks and Jesus is about religion, which probably explains why it’s sitting at the top of the list. Number 4 is the finale of my personal story, and skirts around political issuesRoughly: How should society go about educating itself?. Number 7 is a bit of a mutant. It’s actually just hundreds of people testing to see what random face is generated from their email, so there’s not much of a discussion going on. One of these days I might just nuke all the comments on that post. Nobody cares about those comments and nobody will miss them. I dunno.

Entries 2, 8, 11, 14, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, and 29 are all about Mass Effect 3 – about a third of all the top posts. We could also give partial credit to number 5, since Mass Effect was a popular nominee for title of “Series that went on too long”. So maybe the Mass Effect 3 ending is just a major sore spot with this community.

However, if you look at the dates you’ll see all but four entries on the list are from either 2011 or 2012. Maybe Mass Effect is a big deal, but maybe this blog was just really, really popular at the time and Mass Effect just happened to be the most popular topic during our heyday2011 was my period of maximum output: Stolen Pixels Webcomic at the Escapist, a Let’s Play at the Escapist, a weekly column at the Escapist, Spoiler Warning, plus a steady steam of reviews and essays on the blog. I wish I could maintain that level of output forever.. I actually don’t know. I dumped all of the Google Analytics code when I went from advertisements to direct Patreon support.

That was incredibly liberating, but it does sort of deprive me of a way to study traffic trends. Then again, that’s kind of the point. I can just write what I’ve got in my head / heart and not worry about traffic, content, or ad placement.

For the curious: As of right now, the Supergirl post comes in around #40 or so in the list of top-commented posts.

[4] 2011 was my period of maximum output: Stolen Pixels Webcomic at the Escapist, a Let’s Play at the Escapist, a weekly column at the Escapist, Spoiler Warning, plus a steady steam of reviews and essays on the blog. I wish I could maintain that level of output forever.

As an ex-Internet marketing guy, I strongly recommend you keep the stats there; it is very important to know where your traffic is coming from, particularly in the early days. You need to be promoting the blog in places, and know which of them is actually working based on the amount of time you are spending.

I also recommend only checking it once a month or so, otherwise it is easy to get disheartened.

Now that you mention it, I think my webhost does have some sort of logs. They’re really annoying to get to and even harder to get useful information out of, so I don’t bother. But I suppose I could get some stats if I wanted.

Maybe I was just spoiled by Googles tools. Their stuff really is amazing.

The classic log-file analysis tool is AWStats, which gives you at least some of the same tools that Google Analytics did. It shows country of origin, referers, which pages are visited most, etc. Might be worth looking into.

Actually I think 16 is very understandable. Look at the date it was posted. A short month after Skyrim launched. At this point int time practically every form of media was still collectively shitting itself with positive things to say about Skyrim. It was still close to lanch so this kind of direct critique was very uncommon and Shamus wrote it in a way that put it’s stupidity on display.

#16 is why I’m even here. I had a whinge on the Obsidian forums (I think) about the Thieves’ Guild questline and someone linked me here. I must admit though, after reading that series of posts I tried looking for similar content here but couldn’t really find it, and so I wasn’t really a regular until some time after that – maybe around the point I finally got tricked into watching Spoiler Warning or somesuch.

P.S. Another admission: I didn’t read, or even click on the Supergirl post (due to a complete disinterest in superheroes in general). If it wasn’t for this followup post, I’d not even have known that it had received a massive reception.

I wonder how high the Forum That Should Not Be Named post would go if you didnt lock the comments when you did.Because all of those you listed about,while numerous,are more or less civil(in fact,I think the least civil we got was in some mass effect 3 topics).But that pre fallout 3 fallout 3 post was…not so civil.

Honestly there isnt much to say about the pilot.It shines the context on the lines from the trailer,making some of them better,some of them worse.Ultimately,its just a tv pilot,and therefore not much better than a trailer as an indication of the whole show.

Though it is smarter than the man of steel with how it goes around the “you shouldnt show your powers by saving people” thing.But thats not saying much.

31 is the most I managed to get.And thats if we count 7 and 8 as two posts,instead of one split in two like it may be the case,and if we count 20 and 21 as two posts instead of one differently shaded post as it may be the case.

I guess you can count that smidge in the top left corner as a top of another post,but thats too much of a stretch even for me.

True story: I got the stock photo long after I settled on making a list of 32. At first I was like, “What image would I use for lots of comments? People arguing? A mob? People in a conversation?” But that all sucked, so I searched for “posts”, and this was actually just the most artistically interesting picture of posts on the stock site that I use. The fact that it has ~31 posts is just a fun coincidence.

I thought it was a reference to that horrible fence you dug up at that old house years ago, with the implication this too was a random and annoying obstruction that had to be dealt with just to get it out of the way.

This is a sequel to a post you did a year or two back right? I feel like it was around the ME3 time and possibly a direct consequence to one of those pieces?

I suspect part of the reason why not many of your DRM posts are in this list is simply because most people agree with them. Even as a very contrary person I don’t think I could put up much of a spirited pro-DRM argument and then once you’ve agreed the conversation pretty much stops there.

And like the CCP Grey video you linked to, factionalisation and anger are powerful idea spreaders.

I like seeing surviving in the middle ages on the list next to all these people complaining about Mass Effect and debating important issues. The discussion sparked up there really stands on its own merit.

On Google analytics and metrics:
The list above actually only gives the 32 most commented-on posts, so that means a combination of the following:
* A topic people are interested in
* a topic people have something to say about…
* …which they think you haven’t mentioned in your post already
* …which there is likely more than one valid opinion on, or else the discussion would end quickly.

My comment to most of your anti-DRM posts would be something like “Yes, that’s right, and I wish fewer people would put up with it so companies knew they couldn’t get away with it.
— something I probably said once or twice on this site, and after having said it, there’s little more to add.

That does not by any means make those posts less interesting or valuable! In fact, one might argue that some posts got more comments because interesting aspects or information was missing in the original article, so in some respects, you could increase the number of comments by making a worse post …

Google is trying to tell people that the information they offer could help you, and it probably could, but interpreting it correctly is not at all straightforward, and I’d rather you write about what you know and like to write about (because that’s good for quality) than what some easily-misinterpreted statistics suggest.

The numbers you see cannot capture how much people “liked” the posts (there isn’t really a measure of “like”). And even if they could tell you that, having the results ins your head when writing the next one will only make you liable to skewing your output to please others, and thus putting youreself at risk of producing something less than the thing you wanted.

I’m all for taking feedback serious, and there will be some information in the form of “don’t do that again” in the numbers, but in the end, I think Shamus should write what he feels like writing and attract the kinds of people who like that rather trying to please any specific target demographic.

#2 is actually one of my favorite posts in the blog, and I periodically go back to read it again. Regarding ME3’s ending, there’s a lot of silly objections that make the valid complainers look silly, and there’s all that deal with EA and Bioware trying to pass it all of as unfair nerd rage and using the silly complaints as a basis for their argument.

But your deconstruction does a fantastic job of looking at the entire thing objectively in a way that can’t be just dismissed as fanboyism.

By the way, I don’t remember, have you ever done a post on the Extended Cut ending? Have you even seen it? Some people seem to think it redeems the game, I prefer to think it makes things a just different shade of bad.

I dont seem to remember him specifically talking about it.He did mention it here and there though.

And yes,the extended cut was pretty stupid in its own right.It also gave a giant “fuck you” to everyone who asked for a way to tell the catalyst to piss off.Though,that at least was a resolution to the liara conversation of earlier.Meaning that the writers cannot even do a bad thing without messing it up.

“…there’s all that deal with EA and Bioware trying to pass it all of as unfair nerd rage and using the silly complaints as a basis for their argument.”

Not to mention how all the varying complaints and issues are too often boiled down into “You just wanted a happy ending!” When games like Spec Ops: The Line have no non-miserable ending and that’s widely praised, that line is more than a little misguided. I like the ending where you fail and have to put your hope in the next civilization far more than the rest, but that’s practically an afterthought. In fact, that’s a major part of why the endings to all the Mass Effect games feel so underwhelming, they feel like afterthoughts, things slapped together so everyone could go home and they could be done with it.

Exactly. It’s one of the times I got really pissed off at Penny Arcade. They made a strip making it look like people were annoyed at the ending not being happy, and you’d think from all people they should know better.

What we wanted wasn’t necessarily a happy ending, we just wanted an ending that wasn’t insulting, stupid and lazy.